Shadia Alem

In 2011, Saudi Arabia entered the Venice Biennale for the first time with Alem as the country's representative.[13][14][15] Her work, entitled The Black Arch, which draws on folklore, Islam and medieval travel narratives.[16] The work was made of up of a dark cube suspended on its point over a sea of iridescent spheres.[17] Visitors were encouraged to move around the work and the sphere represented travellers of all kinds.[18] It covered an area of 350 square metres; its scale as an installation has been interpreted as a challenge to spatial order.[19] The colour black was also key to the installation: as the colour of Ka'aba cloth, the colour of the silhouettes of veiled women and of the black stone.[3]

In the same year, Alem was one of the artists chosen to feature in the British Museum's exhibition Hajj.[20][21] However, 2011 was not just a year of achievement - it is also the year their mother died, 15 years worth of work was lost in a flood in Jeddah and computer failure lost five further projects.[3]

She lives and works between Paris and Jeddah.[22]

In 2011, Shadia Alem and her sister, writer, were featured in Vogue Italia, discussing their work and the role of women in Saudi Arabia.[23] While Alem tackles gender issues through her work, her sister sees her writing as genderless.[24] In Alem's work Negative No More, the pre-and-misconceptions of Saudi women are commented on.[25] This installation consisted of 5000 photographic negatives, none of which feature women, to draw attention to the fact that women have been absent from Saudi Arabian political history.[26]